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How has the Western world responded in the past to repeated claims that the end of the world is nigh? How do different religions understand what is ment by the end of the world? What have science and philosophy got to say about the end of time? Why do people suffer? What is hell? Is time cyclical or linear? These are just a few of the questions tackled by Umberto Eco, Stephen Jay Gould, Jean Carriere and Jean-Paul Delumeau in a series of conversations. Mixing the religious with the profane and the deeply profound with the humorous, the book explores anything and everything from the concept of time as embedded in language to the reasons why war become an industrialized phenomenon in the 20th century.

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Amazon Review

This discussion of some millennial themes consists of interviews with the principals followed by a certain amount of mutual comment and some final conclusions. Gould does his standard act about the arbitrariness of the millennium and the importance of the growth awareness of deep time--a sense of the vast age of the world and the universe is important to that perspective which might help us behave decently to each other. Carriere, a Christian intellectual, discussed the hopeful side of the Book of Revelations and the need for loving kindness. Delumeau talks about the end of the Kali Yuga and the balance of the role of Shiva and Vishnu in Hinduism and worries about the disappearance of tenses and moods in French--arguing that something is seriously lost if we can no longer think in the subjunctive Future Perfect. Eco is the star here, and says wonderfully phrased, paradoxical, but not especially memorable, things about how right all the others are; if anyone wants to know what the brightest and best think about the millennium, this is not a bad place to start--the stress on kindness as an ultimate human value cannot but be attractive. --Roz Kaveney

Top customer reviews

I bought this book for my partner quite a few years ago and I can't put it down. I've taken it away on holiday time and time again and read it over and over. It is truly fascinating. At times I found the concepts a little hard to follow but it is profound and I would highly recommend this book.

Four prominent figures of today's science and philosophy engage in a lucid and thorough discussion with 3 french journalists about the role of time throughout the human history. Each of the four authors, all experts in their field, presents the concepts of time and millenarianism, while attempting to provide us with an explanation about the collective belief that one day our world will end. The book is organized in four chapters and ends with a conclusion from each author. The covered subjects range from palaeontology, history, religion, even quantum mechanics. While the role of philosophy is mainly to ask questions, this collection of philosophical essays will provide one with a plethora of answers.

This work does not really hang together very well. Each of the respective contributors does his own thing.

The work contains according to the book - jacket these essays. " Paleontologist Stephen Jay Goud on dating the Creation, evolutionary ' deep time' and the need for ecological ethics on a human scale. Novelist, medievalist and Web fanatic UmbertoEco on the breave new world of cyberspace, and its likely impact on memory, cultural continuity and access toknowledge. Catholic historian Jean Delumeau on how the Western Imagination has always been haunted by ideas of the Apocalypse. ScreenwriterJean- Claude Carriere on the 'art of slowness' and attitudes toward time in non- Western cultures.'

The work nonetheless contains much interesting information and speculative matter.

One small piece from the work, the great Paleontologist Goud is asked " How do you see earth looking in a thousand years time? '

His answer is humble and refreshing.

" I don't see it. The things one can actually predict are not very interesting. The sun will continue to shine.. But the history of human beings-and that's what your question is about - consists only of unpredictable events. What we are least weel- placed to predict is technological evolution. I can't predict what will happen in fifty years, let alone in a thousand.. Culture evolves in a Lamarckian way, in that it allows the transmission of acquired characteristics. We directly transmit what we have learned to subsequent generations, which is why technological evolution is ultra- powerful, cumulative , directional ..

Surely, we can't talk and think enoughabout the state of mankind!But these are hazardous waters! Where should we beginand where do we want to go from there? So, HavingGould and Eco as guides seems like a clever start! According to the book, the hebrew language hasno exact present tense?? The infinitely brief, thevery essense of the present, is not to be found - itcan be neither fixed, nor measured. It is thereforecompletely justifiable, grammaticale speaking,to leave out the present? Yet, obviously, it is from the present we look at thepast and towards the future. Stephen Jay Gould is always a pleasure to listen to -and the right one to put time into perspective. For a palaeontologist, like Gould, 7000 years(timespand of human culture) is really no more thanthe twinkling of an eye. So all we know is really inthe present - which hardly exist! From this position we look out into concepts likethe eternity - which we obviously really can't grasp.And into ourselfes were e.g. DNA was discovered as recentlyas 1953. Mystery upon mystery. So, we struggle to discover instances of regularity andto fit them together with the help of stories. We throwin a little religion "were religions do notask questions, they answer them". Still we are farremoved from any real "understanding". And that is what these conversations are about.With Umberto Eco and Stephen Jay Gould - it isof course an ok read. But only an appetizer.-Simon

5.0 out of 5 starsIntriguing thoughts about nature and the future of the world

ByMidwest Book Reviewon 5 August 2000 - Published on Amazon.com

Four thinkers (Gould, Eco, Jean Delumeau and Jean-Claude Carriere) come together to ponder questions about the end and beginning of the world and the state of mankind and the planet in Conversations About the End of Time. Philosophy blends with science to provide some intriguing thoughts about the nature and future of the world.

---------- ----------I'm talking about that Darwinian theory of Natural Selection you keep telling as if it were true. It is "differential reproductive success". So then that means I need at least 2 different things to call some event NS. So then I ask myself what do these 2 different things have to do with each other? So then I say well either they influence each other's reproduction some way, or they could as well be in different environments. So they must influence each other's reproduction some way. So then I ask, what ways can the one influence the reproduction of the other?+/- increase reproduction at cost of the other +/+ mutual increase of each other's reproduction -/- mutual decrease of each other's reproduction +/0 and so on -/0 0/0but what you do, is pretend like there are only +/- relationships. You ignore all other type of relationships with NS. Your natural selection theory is false, for being unsystematic in describing the relationships between living beings. You make teachers into liars by it.